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| Willie (HoHo) at Six Weeks |
Abagail (Abba) Zabba and Rocketdog Rockford (Rocky) Rhoades got together to produce a wonderful litter of pet quality puppies. This was the third and final litter for Abba Zabba (who will be spayed and retired to our farm). This is the fifth litter for Rocky and his first as our only breeding male. This litter presented some challenges which I will note in this introduction, but the outcome today is that we have six wonderful and healthy puppies to evaluate.
We have been writing litter evaluations since 2015 using a Six Point Evaluation which takes into account the five key points of the American Kennel Club descriptive criteria for the breed, and one point which we assign subjectively and is based solely on looks and personality. It's a good idea to look at Our Six Point Evaluation page to familiarize yourself with how we determine what is important in each evaluation. There were some health issues in this litter which should be discussed prior to evaluating the individuals:
- One little girl had heart murmurs and an inoperable double hernia, among other things, which eventually led us to make the hard choice to relieve her suffering. This was our only "Sad Puppy".
- The second major problem came in the first puppy of the litter, a little male named HoHo, who displayed a condition commonly known as "Failure to Thrive". Happily for us all, we caught this lack of eating skills defect early on and were able to hand feed him back to health and he is now a healthy and scrappy little boy.
- The third problem we encountered as the happy problem of puppies overeating and having weight become an issue in early development. Two of our pups need special training to get them up and running on their feet. We caught the condition in the first weeks and were able to train the pups with lazy backsides to use their legs as they should.
Since Abba Zabba is retiring, were are not worried about passing bad traits on to future offspring. We haven't had health issues here since we retired Bit O'Honey early and since Bit O'Honey and Abba Zabba are littermate sisters from the same kennel we suppose these problems were genetic in some ways, but none of this should be a problem for the breed going forward. Certain of the pups will not have the option for purchase of breeding rights and we do this for the good of the breed more than any warning of future health concerns. We expect no further health troubles in the litter and have not experienced any health problems in the past four weeks.
HoHo, the name we used when he was whelped, is now called Wille. He will be a lifetime companion our other male puppy, now named Waylon. Willie was one of our major health scares early on. He had trouble focusing his attention of eating. We pay close attention, in the first days of a new litter, to the weight of each pup and HoHo (Willie) was losing weight even though he seemed to be feeding. While not all pups are "good eaters", in some this can develop into a condition known as Failure to Thrive and this is often fatal since it occurs during the most important part of puppy development. We caught the condition as it developed and put HoHo on bottle feeding and a lot of extra care. Eventually his weight began to rise and he made a full recovery. In our experience our pups nearly double in weight every week, HoHo reached this first week milestone after three weeks of extra care so we were concerned he would suffer permanent development deficiency issues. Today he weighs in at just over half the size of his siblings and is eating solid food with the litter. We have been trying to breed some of the size out of the Basset Hound and in Willie it seems likely he will be a small Basset adult. But this is not to say that he doesn't meet the Standard. Nor does this say we have bred a genetically stable smaller Basset.
Willie is a good example of the breed at this point in his life. His foreleg bones are stout and sufficient for his diminutive size, his body is shaped well and his hip stance, perhaps a good indicator of future bone health, is aggressive and quite strong. Willie tapers well from shoulder to waist and has fairly well developed hip width consistent with his smaller frame. Head shape, ear size and setting (with his ears being set well back on his well domed head), jaw setting, and tail, are all quite good. His feet are sized well and we expect that he will continue to catch up in size to his litter mates, while not reaching what might be considered completely full size.
Wille had quite a lot of extra attention in the early going, so he has quite a bit of lap sitter in his personality. He is accustomed to being slightly abused by his large litter mates and has learned to snap back and defend himself, while often looking to others for protection. He loves to snuggle up closely and spend time with humans. He is a serious boy, not given to joviality, but he does love to play chase games, at least until the game turns to rough and tumble play. He likes to spend time alone with a toy occasionally. Being small Willie likes special treatment, but is otherwise a normal happy puppy.
Willie is a tri-colored buy, with little brown fur showing today. But we expect he will eventually develop quite a bit more brown in his coat and have a red head and ears as an adult. His fur coloring is very symmetrical in the face. The texture of his fur is soft, but not especially luxurious. While Willie is a lovely puppy, he is not of show quality. But he will make a particularly lovely pet.
Though a bit unexpected, Willie receives full marks for structural development and loses one point for his early days of not eating since the outcome of this is not known. Willie may become something of an oddity for his size, but only time to grow will tell us how large he may become. He is a good looking little guy and gets half a point for aesthetic appeal (and almost got the full point for pretty). Four and a half points on our six point scale is a good set of marks considering how he started off.
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